How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I'll ask while I have the logs visible...

Often right after I make a wifi connection the tablet immediately begins downloading. My proxy logs show requests to repository.maemo.org and catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com. I looked around and found that the URLs appear in files under /etc/hildon-application-manager/ and /home/user/.hildon-application-manager/ contains some related files.
Then I got lost in the gap between bringing up a network interface and what seems to be a GUI application. If there was some configuration setting, I missed it.

What can I do to prevent these downloads?

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I think that it's the "normal" check for software updates available.
No idea where this is started from though.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I think every time you start the application manager, otherwise the dl's do not take place.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

.....................

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Trying to summon Merlyn? ;-)

It will only do an automatic refresh once in a 24 hour period, and that can be tuned via the /apps/hildon/update-notifier/check_interval GConf key (value is in minutes).

Equivocal raises a valid point though, and it's something that's been bugging me for a while. Every time you connect there's all sorts of stuff on the tablet waking up (email accounts, rtcomm accounts, rss feeds, AGPS, weather applets and so on) and fighting each other for CPU cycles and bandwidth. In normal (read: WiFi) circumstances the "storm" is usually over after a few seconds but on slower links it can be quite bad and made worse by stuff timing out and retransmitting. I wonder if it's somehow possible to delay some less time-sensitive stuff from updating immediately upon connection. Eg one probably wants their SIP accounts registering asap, but it's ok if the application catalogue refreshes a minute later.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Yay, I win!

I forget that cat isn't needed but I've fallen into a bad habit of thinking that grep is most useful when things are piped into it. Like, I do "find | grep whatever" rather than "find -name whatever". :o

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

lma: excellent observation.

I want my e-mail, application catalogues, and weather forecast to be updated after I connect, but I agree, I don't need it so badly that it is acceptable to make my tablet grind nearly to a halt after connecting as everything fights for the bandwidth...

It would be nice if they had some kind of "if connected AND IDLE" setting for these auto-updates.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Technically, those are non-equivalent; -name uses a shell pattern, and -regex matches the entire path and name. To exactly substitute, you'd want::p

Anyway, imho, pointless cats, greps, etc. are no big deal for interactive shell work; the challenge is to remember to clean things up when you paste it into a file. OTOH, maybe if I were more rigorous about interactive work, my script-tidying would go better...

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed this and wished he could adjust or turn it off and ONLY use manual updates. (I prefer the latter on my OWN schedule.)

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Well, that's easy enough. If you've got gconf-editor installed, just go to /apps/hildon/update-notifier and set check_interval to something really huge. If not, then you really should install it, but this'll do the same thing:
If you don't manually check for updates in the next 4083 years, it will still go ahead and try to check automatically, but bandwidth should be cheap enough by then for this to be a non-issue. ;)

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

What ever happened to just turning it off? This is like Y2K all over again! You watch! In 4083 years, we'll be all like, 'OMG!! WTF?? LOL!' ;)

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I prefer off to thousand-year-delay myself. But apparently "off" is an alien concept.

Very frustrating. "check_interval" is the only control? 0 is sometimes an "off" value but attempts to set 0 revert to 1440.

Relocating /usr/lib/hildon-desktop/libhildon-update-notifier.so* stopped it in its tracks. Unknown side effects, but didn't stop the Application Manager GUI from checking for updates. Not what I'd consider a good solution.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Uhm... qwerty12 already pointed to the place where the recurring event is defined. Just edit the XML (carefully!) and restart alarmd.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

I could have sworn there was a way to set it from GUI, but can't remember whether it was from app manager or control panel sub-sub-sub-submenu...

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

app manager is hiding a settings dialog, but to access it one need to restart app manager after doing the red pill switch...

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Yeah, and IIRC that allows you to disable it (but not to set the interval -- the default 24h is too long for my taste!), but I'm not sure whether that persists after switching back to blue pill.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

When the event kept reappearing I concluded that it was not the root of the problem. Alot of this would be attributable to not killing alarmd first. Also, tweaking the check_interval with gconftool generated a replacement event.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Probably, I just tried it (including restarting alarmd) and it didn't reappear even after starting h-a-m and doing a manual update.

Indeed it does, but that's reasonable IMHO.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Over my dialup internet connection the downloads were taking longer than the 1 minute check interval. With the next event firing immediately my edits weren't taking effect.

Once it got sorted out the event did not reappear until I toggled [Control Panel > Panels > Status bar > Software update notifier] on. Toggling it off did not remove the event.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

DDTT :-)

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

Also feel free to vote for https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5137 to get a setting for this instead of the (useful) hack described in here.

Re: How to stop uncommanded downloads?
 

tho anything there will benefit N900 and later, not existing products in peoples hands...